Hinduism
the original universal religion,
affirming and learning from all faiths.
sermon for North Idaho Unitarian Universalists
October 1, 2017

In my "blurb" for this week,
  saying that Hinduism affirms and learns
                   from all faiths,
        I'm being very optimistic.

All religions have that capability,
   affirming and learning from others.

Most fail to live up to it, at one time or another.

This kind of affirmation is famously
    a characteristic of Hinduism.

It is more a blend of many faiths that it has absorbed
   than a single, monolithic religion
      in its own right.

Today, there are movements in all religions
   to close themselves off
       and claim that they alone have the truth.

Tragically, this is the case with Hinduism, too.

The present prime minister of India
            is a Hindu Nationalist,

and that means about the same thing in India
     as a Christian Nationalist in the U.S.

Fundamentalism, or as I prefer to call it,
                 funny mentalism,
  is on the rise everywhere, it seems.

To say the least,
        it means that today is not a good time
                  to be Muslim in India.

On the other hand,
   it has not always been so,
       and the Hindu faith has adapted itself
           to many changes over the milennia.

To begin with,
    Hinduism has no single founder we can point to.

Hindus believe
  that there have been many avatars of the Gods,
     extensions of themselves in human form.

Possibly the best known of those is Krishna,
  an avatar of the God Vishnu,
      himself the Second Person
          of the Hindu Trinity.

There are many parallels between Krishna and Christ
but it is not my purpose today
or in this series
to speak on comparative religions.

Maybe it can suffice to say just a few words about
                       Hindu polytheism.

All the Hindu Gods are themselves
    manifestations of the Mind of the Universe.

That Mind, that source of all being,
     is very much like Allah in Islam
        or En Sof in Judaism.

More on that later, I promise!

In the deepest sense of Hindu philosophy,
the Mind of the Universe is all there really is.

Everything in the world is simply an expression
   of that Mind's thoughts,
      and we ourselves and all we do
         are part of that higher reality.

The more we are aware of it,
    the more truly we are self-realized,
        the more we are ourselves
            as we were meant to be.

There is a widespread expression of Hinduism
   in the United States today:
      The Self-Realization Fellowship,

founded by the author of Autobiography of a Yogi,
                   Paramhansa Yogananda.

They have an Ashram, a teaching center,
                   in the Seattle area.

They teach a method of meditation based on "OM"
     or "AUM" - which they believe to be
          the original Mantra or sound
              by which the Mind of the Universe
                 first begins to manifest all things.

A mantra is simply a sound used to center the mind
                       when we meditate.

For many Hindus
   meditation is the central practice of their faith.

Another method of meditation
   was taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
      the Beatles' guru.

They also have a teaching center
       in our part of the world,
just down the road from us in St. Maries.

http://www.tm.org/transcendental-meditation-stmaries

By way of full disclosure,
I have practiced this technique of meditation
for almost 50 years.

I have found it helpful in many ways,
    so Hinduism is an important part
       of my own spiritual life.

As I often say, I am an agnostic Christian.

As such, I am more than willing to learn
from others:
other people
other faiths
other traditions
other forms of spirituality.

The Hindu faith is so diverse
that it has denominations of its own,
providing something for nearly everyone.

Many of those are found in relation to
the multitude of Hindu Gods.

Ganesh is the son of the God Shiva
and the Goddess Parvati.

He is the one with the elephant's head.

His followers consider him the best representation
of the true being of God, the Supreme Being.

Likewise with many others
from Hanuman the monkey god

to the Hindu Trinity (or Trimurti, i.e. three forms),
Brahma the creator
Vishnu the preserver
and Shiva the destroyer.

The pervasiveness of Hindu influence in culture
all over the world
is painfully represented in the words of
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
head of of the Los Alamos Laboratory,
at the explosion of the first atomic bomb test
in the White Sands desert of New Mexico:

He loosely quoted Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita,
"I am become death... the destroyer of worlds."

In our time, as we stand at the brink in fear
of nuclear weapons once again,
those words echo as a way of reminding us
of the power of religions to provide metaphors
at the very least
to help us represent our thoughts in words.

There are many gods and goddesses in Hinduism,
and they are all great representations
of some aspect of universal experience.

That universality of experience
   is what ties us all together,
        no matter what we believe,
            or if we believe nothing at all
                about gods and goddesses.

We are all part of this human enterprise
   and we learn a great deal from each other
    if we are paying attention.

Hinduism provides a focus of the Oneness
   at the center of all things,
     and so we come back to the idea of Monism,
        the true Being of One Mind at the heart
                    of all worlds.

With this as the central understanding
  of Hindu faith and philosophy,
     it has long been possible
        for Hindus to combine
  many different understandings
          in one greater whole.

Worshippers of Ganesh do not have to try to convert
    worshippers of his Father, Shiva,
          or his Mother, Parvati.

So it is no great surprise that many Hindus
    also believe in Jesus
         as an Avatar, or self-expression,
                     of God.

One of my bishops
  in my years of Lutheran parish ministry
     visited India.

He was very surprised to find many believers in Jesus
   among the people he met there,
       even though very few of them had joined
           any sort of Christian church.

His response was to ask,
   "How should the church relate
         to the hundreds of millions
            of unbaptized believers
                in India?"

Nobody came up with a satisfactory answer,
    and I doubt that it matters much
        to the Hindus who also believe in Jesus!

Probably the most famous and most revered
   among Hindus who believed in Jesus
      was the great soul, Mohandas Gandhi.

His title, Mahatma is a Sanskrit expression
   that simply means, Great Soul (Maha Atman).

He once famously said, "I am a Hindu,
    I am a Muslim,
      I am a Christian,
         I am a Jew."

In this he almost sounded Unitarian, didn't he?

In effect, progressive Hindus
  from ancient times through today,
     are forerunners of Unitarian Universalism.

Many of the principles of Hinduism
   are precious to us as UU's.

One of those is ahimsa, harmlessness,
  and Gandhi adapted it as his principle
    for effecting social change,
      non-violence.

Nothing could be more relevant to our times.

Gandhi gained the independence of his country
  through nonviolent noncooperation with evil,

despite voices from the declining colonial power
that were so unaware of reality
that they could say things like,
"I don't understand the issue!
           India is British!"

It is true that to this day,
   only one language is spoken
       through all of India,
      and that language is
               English!

Yet India is very much its own country.

Its independence was achieved
  with a lot of suffering
    but a minimum of bloodshed
      because of a contemporary expression
         of ancient and venerable principles
            of the Hindu faith.

For us as Unitarian Universalists
    in our own time and place
       we can defend our own principles
           in the public square
             by following similar expressions
                of the Hindu principle of ahimsa
                   as nonviolence
                      in word and deed.

Today's Hindus do not perfectly exemplify tradition
      and neither do we,
          but it is a worthy goal for us all.

We can agree to disagree
    without being disagreeable
          and we can set an example of dialogue
                and listening
                      instead of fighting in the streets.

Whatever we may believe or not believe
   about gods and goddesses,
      Hinduism provides us
          with a rich collection of metaphors
               about human life and spirituality.

We can begin with the Mind
     at the heart of the Multiverse,
          known as Brahman
(not to be confused, though it is often so
      with Brahma, the Creator God).

We can conclude with the understanding
   that Mind and Thought are the ultimate reality,
      and all else is malleable, maybe even illusory.

As Unitarian Universalists,
     like Hindus, we can be open to all faiths
          to learn and expand our horizons.

Like Hindus we can focus on the Oneness of all,
  meditating on living at peace and without harm
                                for all.

Namastë!